Wise words from a wise man. I was honored to meet him for the first time at a friend’s birthday party in Portland awhile back. I could tell it was him by the “If you can read this, I have cancer again” tattoo on the back of his bald head. He was incredibly kind then as now, and he will be missed.

When I see people being gratuitously unkind to someone, it always ticks me off a little. The students and instructors in our dojos have learned that I will send somene home for the day if they shit on someone else. I understand people have bad days – maybe traffic was bad and your boss chewed you out before coming to class, maybe your dog died yesterday and someone picked your pocket – but it’s one thing to vent and another altogether to pay it forward by making someone else’s life more difficult. If more people understood the difference, the world would be a better place, IMHO.

Part of his advice re-enforces something I heard long ago (and, fortunately, heeded fairly well): “If you do this thing you are proposeing to do, you will regret it from time to time. If you do not do it, you will always regret not doing it”. (Mind you, this advice does _not_ apply to those few (but sometimes tempting) things that you will assuredly always regret doing.)